MLB Insider: Piazza's book puts him in no-win with Vin

Mike Piazza spent the division-winning season of 2006 with the Padres, as recalled in an autobiography in which he felt Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully was lauding San Diego's Ken Caminiti over his candidacy for the MVP of 1996. Photo by Nelvin C. Cepeda/U-T San Diego/Zuma Press. Copyright 2006 San Diego Union-Tribune

Mike Piazza spent the division-winning season of 2006 with the Padres, as recalled in an autobiography in which he felt Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully was lauding San Diego's Ken Caminiti over his candidacy for the MVP of 1996. Photo by Nelvin C. Cepeda/U-T San Diego/Zuma Press. Copyright 2006 San Diego Union-Tribune

If he was looking to cast aspersions or lay blame on someone more unassailable and less revered -- if only to stir up book sales -- Mike Piazza might’ve chosen to bad-mouth Mother Teresa. And she wouldn’t even be around anymore to defend herself.

You can't believe that anybody within radio range of Chavez Ravine, let alone an ex-player who’d spent years with both the home and visiting teams at Dodger Stadium, would be crazy or common-senseless enough to go after Scully, the Dodger deity. That any ex-player would have the nerve to risk a war of words with the man whose voice, vocabulary, mellifluous delivery, tone and general kindness have made Scully the most beloved L.A. Dodger whose name wasn’t Sandy or Fernando.

No doubt a play on Piazza’s power-hitting and his rise from 62nd-round draft choice to Most Valuable Player contender and Hall of Fame candidate, the title of Piazza’s book is “Long Shot.” Man, is it. You take a shot at Scully, you better have ICBM’s, not just a sentence or two of derision.

The line that’s caused all the ruckus is in the first paragraph of Chapter 14, which begins with the fans of Los Angeles “beating me up on a daily basis” over his going-nowhere contract talks with the Dodgers in the spring of 1998.

“On top of that,” said Piazza, “Vin Scully was crushing me.”

Let’s go to the tape. In an on-camera interview for KTLA with Piazza at Dodgertown, Scully pushed Piazza to explain his “ultimatum” to the club. Even though Piazza’s answer was vague jockspeak, Scully generously punctuated it with a “Well said.” Vin being Vin. Asked recently by the Los Angeles Times about Piazza's printed assertions, Scully said he was "flabbergasted," denyng he ever criticized the catcher for his contract stance.

Elsewhere in the book, Piazza also seemed disenchanted with the legendary Dodgers broadcaster for some of his in-game comments, the praise Scully heaped on Ken Caminiti of the Padres during his 40-homer, 130-RBI season of 1996.

“It seemed like every time he did something against us that year, Vin Scully would go, “Ken Caminiti, everybody’s MVP!’ “ wrote Piazza, the runnerup for the award. “Thanks, Vin.”

In fact, Caminiti was every voter’s MVP, the unanimous choice of ‘96. Noting in the book how (the since-deceased) Caminiti eventually blew the whistle on his own steroid use -- and denying that he ever juiced -- Piazza said it wasn’t the PED that determined the MVP. Rather, he wrote, Caminiti won “the popularity contest.”

Specifically, Piazza believed Caminiti reaped the benefits of the “legend of getting off the training table, pulling out his IV, polishing off his Snickers bar, and clubbing two homers off the Mets” in one epic August game in the heat of Monterrey, Mexico.

Exactly a decade later, Piazza would be spending his next-to-last major league season with the Padres. Hitting more like an old Piazza than the Piazza of old until a second-half surge, he threw out a painful-to-watch 12 percent of 110 stolen-base attempts in 2006. Beyond his affection for then Padres manager Bruce Bochy and the local music scene, though, Piazza said something "clicked" for him with the Padres.

“San Diego," he wrote. "One newspaper. A beach. Pleasant fans. If I struck out with a runner on second, nobody booed. If I went one for nineteen, nobody shouted “Retire!” If I made a bad throw, nobody screamed, “Play first base!